


A Mother's Love

by fictorium



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Baby Charlotte pops up again, Cat Grant Appreciation Week, F/F, Fluff, Minor Character Death, Mother-Daughter Relationship, ship is not the focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 03:08:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10913073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/pseuds/fictorium
Summary: Cat has a complicated history with her mother.





	A Mother's Love

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to @reginalovesemma for letting me bounce this one off her.

She’s four years old when she asks her father why he always tells the bedtime stories. 

“Don’t you like them, little Cat?”

“But mommy writes books. Why doesn’t she ever want to tell me stories?”

“Mommy edits books,” comes mommy’s voice from the doorway. Cat sits up in bed, squinting to see in the dull glow of her nightlight. “You know that’s not the same, Kitty.”

“I want to tell my own stories,” Cat decides, lying down again and turning towards her father. “It’s okay daddy, you can finish this one.”

She doesn’t remember the conversation until many years later, when she reads the title on the inside cover of her very own magazine. _Cat Grant, Editor-in-Chief_. Her hand hovers over the phone, the impulse to call her mother and tell her that she sees it now, that it takes more than one person to tell a story, but it’s much too little, and it’s far too late. 

* * *

When her mother calls the school, she insists that Cat be allowed to finish out the day. It’s only when a car is waiting at the gates that she even knows anything is wrong.

The hospital is terrifying, the smell of blood and fear breaking through the scent of antiseptic from the moment she sets foot inside. Thirteen years old and she knows before the doctor says a word, with his starched white coat, a careless splash of coffee on the lapel. Her father deserves better. He deserves perfection, steady hands and spotless coats. Not this man who smells faintly of sweat, saying _we did everything we could._

No one will let her see him, to say the goodbye he can no longer hear. It’s only in the car on the way home that the fog she’s been sitting in curdles to something heavy, something that weighs her down and makes her bones creak under her skin.

“The nurse told me he was brought in at one,” she accuses, and her mother flinches just enough for Cat to be sure, right down in her marrow, that the decision was deliberate. “I could have seen him.”

“It was for the best, Kitty. He wouldn’t have wanted you to see him like that. This way you remember him as he was.”

“I wanted to say-”

“You can’t always say everything that comes into your head. Life doesn’t work that way. You can’t choose who tells the stories, and there isn’t always the time to say the things you want to say. Now, do be quiet. We’re in mourning.”

The spark ignites then. The vapor of an idea that’s been hard to grasp in the maelstrom of options for a bright young woman who should have the world at her feet. _You’re not a writer,_ wasn’t that how mother had put it over Cat’s last report card? 

Well, they’d see about that. 

* * *

She takes the scenic route home from the lawyer’s offices, via three bars and a liquor store. Cat can barely see straight by the time she unlocks her front door. Hopefully the sight of her mother waiting by the living room window is an apparition, because Cat’s heart is broken into too many pieces to stick back together and protect from her mother’s barbs.

“He called me,” her mom is saying. “... worried about you. He and Adam fly out...” It fades out under Cat’s messy sobs. She can’t hear it again, the breadth and depth of what she’s lost, of what she’s given up without enough of a fight. When she makes it as far as the window, full-length and with a view over National City that almost makes it feel like home, two years in, her mother is waiting.

This time her arms are extended, and she pulls Cat close enough to wrinkle the silk blouse, to spoil her blazer with tears, and doesn’t even sigh about it. Was her mother always this solid, this strong? Cat knows her own slender frame is a direct inheritance, but the deceptive strength is a new development.

“You’ll survive,” her mom is saying. “You’ll be surprised what you can take. You’ve always been strong, Kitty.” For the first time in years, that diminutive sounds like a fond one. A kiss to the temple, a brisk wiping of tears. “Now sleep it off. You’ll feel better if you rest.”

Cat does, though the sleep is jagged and messy. She wakes to sunlight from curtains pulled back, to coffee made without cream or sugar. Her mother perches on the bottom corner of the bed, nose wrinkled in disgust as Cat drags herself back to functional. The hum of the city outside enters her veins with the caffeine, and she’s trying to remember what her first meeting is supposed to be. It’s derailed by the sight of a sippy cup on the floor, left behind in the back and forth exchanges of recent months.

Katherine sees it, and scoops it up. “You know,” she says, conspiratorial for a change. “As much as it hurts, you might come to see you’re lucky. More mothers than you have wished for a kind of reset. For a chance to get their old life back without the diapers, and the scraped knees and the...”

She trails off, realizing she’s said too much. Twenty-five years of never feeling quite wanted, of never quite belonging, suddenly make a painful kind of sense. The crack that Cat’s been so careful never to step on when they talk, opens like a chasm between them. 

“I need to shower,” Cat says to end the awkward silence. “I have work. Thanks for... whatever.”

Her mother is gone by the time Cat steps out of the bathroom with wet hair, only the sippy cup in the trash and the faint scent of lilac belying that she was ever there at all.

There’s time, if only a few minutes, to call Adam’s father before they leave for their flight to Opal City. Maybe some last-ditch desperation is all it would take, and Cat moves to the phone where it sits on its table in the hallway. She’s dripping from her hair, splashing on her shoulders and down to the wooden floors. 

She stands, frozen, until it’s too late for even the most disorganized person to leave and make the flight. 

It’s for the best.

* * *

Carter is three months old when he meets his grandmother, after a series of half-hearted cancellations on Cat’s part, the rest supplied by her mother’s excuses. It isn’t difficult the way it was with Adam, Cat is far less overwhelmed and a fleet of nannies have already been vetted. If she has one skill as a mother, it’s in picking devoted fathers. Though she’s as difficult as ever, as unlikely to make this union last, Carter will have two parents who love him for their entire lives, together or apart.

They endure the formalities, tea and overdone gifts on the terrace. Carter is an angel, sleeping most of the time, and barely grousing when he wakes. He’s going to be an easy baby, everyone says so. It’s hard not to preen when even her mother is impressed by his agreeable nature.

Of course it’s a hotel for Katherine, who _wouldn’t want to intrude_. Cat is relieved when the town car pulls up out front, but she isn’t expecting her mother to hand over a book that Cat hasn’t seen in thirty years or more.

“You should read to him,” her mother tells her, and it’s a gift and a warning in one. “You should be the one. Even on late nights, or when you’re too tired to keep those reading glasses on, the ones you pretend not to need.”

Cat opens the cover like it’s a first edition, smoothing her fingers over the front page. “I always thought he was making them up.”

“Oh, he was a lot of the time. But he scrawled all over the margins, so you’ll have most of them.” Her mother frowns, a purist who likes her books unscathed. Scribbles are for drafts and manuscripts. “Congratulations, Kitty.”

It’s not _I_ _love you_ or _I’m proud of you_ but Cat’s expectations these days are nothing if not realistic. She waves her mother off and goes to place the book in Carter’s nursery, right beside the crib.

* * *

They skip the public wedding when the world almost ends again, eloping to Metropolis with only Carter and Alex as witnesses, Clark and Lois crashing the party. Cat lets them stay because the champagne is an acceptable vintage. 

When Charlotte is born, a party seems the least they can do for all the fond wishes that come their way, and a raised middle finger to everyone who thinks commenting negatively on the first human-Kryptonian child is an acceptable pastime. Kara frets and plans and starts over with a manic intensity not seen since her assistant days, but Cat simply smiles and signs more checks. She runs interference for Carter and fusses over Charlotte, and before their tired little family realizes it, the big day is upon them.

Katherine doesn’t confirm until the morning of, to Kara directly, and Cat’s a little blindsided when her mother is amongst the first to arrive. She’s never been anything other than fashionably late. 

“Well,” her mother announces, holding Charlotte in arms that seem just a little too frail. Cat holds her breath, ready to swoop in. “She’s a big girl. You should be glad you didn’t have to carry this one.”

It’s so ordinary, so motherly, that Cat forgets herself and laughs. “I told Kara that Charlotte has her shoulders.”

“You’ve gotten good at this,” Katherine confides, as Kara approaches with that where’s my baby smile, just a little too fixed. She’s blossoming, adjusting, but giddy on having a new part of her family when she never expected it to be possible. “I never quite mastered it, did I?”

“Well, you only had one shot,” Cat concedes. “And I don’t think I was ever easy.”

“Not a word many people use about you, no,” Kara supplies, joining them. The gleam in her eye has the baby handed over in record time. “Hello Mrs. Grant.”

There’s no _call me Katherine_ but it’s amicable enough for now. “Keira, I have a little something for Charlotte,” instead. Another book produced from the oversized purse, another rabbit from the hat. Cat realizes now that her love of words, her dealer in the early days of addiction, is standing before her. 

“She’s advanced, mother, but she’s still not reading yet.”

“It’s for her mothers,” Katherine scolds. “An indulgence of mine. I know you have your father’s stories for Carter. Well, these are mine.”

Professionally printed and bound - a favor no doubt from one of those countless contacts in publishing. _Stories For My Granddaughter by Katherine Grant_. “Mother?”

“It would have been for my daughter, but well. I’m not a writer. Or I wasn’t. Oh don’t make a scene, Keira. Honestly Kitty, how is she going to survive being your wife if she cries at everything?”

Cat wraps an arm around Kara and Charlotte, protective instinct rising. “She’ll survive just fine. We all will. Thank you for the book.”

“Think nothing of it.” 

And despite her curiosity, the book goes in the pile of gifts with everything else, and Cat lets herself forget.

* * *

Three weeks later the call comes.

Her mother passed peacefully at home, open book on the nightstand. Cat takes the call on the balcony of the penthouse, Charlotte bouncing on her lap. Plans will be made, of course. The moment she knows Kara will take over, her head for details a comfort to Cat in the strangest ways.

But it can wait. A few more minutes, no one will know.

“Mothers,” Cat sighs, picking Charlotte up and kissing her cheek. “Daughters,” she adds, kissing the other. With a gurgling little laugh, Charlotte reaches for Cat’s face. “Let’s try not to make it so hard this time, hmm?”

If the smile - Kara’s smile, in miniature - is any indication, then her daughter absolutely agrees. 


End file.
